The Sound of Travel and the Engine
by Stunt Muppet
Summary: Optimus helps Sari adjust to Cybertron any way he can. Post-series.


A/N: Post-series; spoilers as such. Title comes from R.E.M.'s "You Are The Everything", which is kind of what this fic is inspired by. So that should give you a clue as to the mood, then.

* * *

When they return to Cybertron he keeps his Earth altmode, and though there are a few inquiring looks nobody actually asks why. He prepares an explanation like he prepares for every other inevitable query (it handles better, he's come to like it, it has a greater attachment range) but it is never needed.

Most of the questions are directed at the diminutive half-organic he's brought home with him, and those he too often doesn't have answers for. No, he doesn't know how she got that way, or what a protoform was even doing on Earth in the first place, or why the AllSpark had chosen her or found her – if it even had, and this all wasn't just the wildest set of coincidences.

And then the ones he could answer were worse. No, you can't dissect her, or send her back to Earth because she scares you, or try to duplicate her, or try to divide her human and Cybertronian components, or anything like that, yes I know it could potentially help the war effort but she's a living being, just like we are, she doesn't deserve that after everything she's done for us, for Spark's sake she's just a kid, don't you understand that –

Thankfully before he ever actually says any of that he realizes that no, they don't. A few stellar cycles ago the idea that newer bots – people – were any less expendable than the older would have been as unknown to him as it was to them.

Sometimes he wanted more than anything to send her back to Earth, to open up the space bridge and tell her to just forget them, forget about this planet and this war and be _safe_. But it was too late for that now – and, selfishly, it would still mean never seeing her again, just leaving her all but alone on another planet she didn't fully belong to and hoping that she'd be alright.

Besides, even if he told her to go back home she wouldn't do it. She was much too stubborn for that. She wouldn't even have met them if she wasn't.

Sari wanders in to his quarters near the middle of the solar cycle, rubbing her eyes and yawning. When she first upgraded it had taken several cycles to accustom herself to her new body's requirements; her Cybertronian modifications exhausted her with too much use but gradually threw her off her human sleep cycle. Ratchet had said she'd need more rest than they would, confirming without ever saying so that she wouldn't ever really be in synch with either half of herself. It doesn't help that the closest thing to beds the barracks have are simple platforms, suitable for robots like him but nothing like she's used to.

And so he keeps his Earth altmode for her.

"I don't know how you guys do it," she says, leaning against the walls of his quarters and stretching out her arms. "I'm beat just getting from one place to another. Everything's so _big_."

"I'd say you'll get used to it," he replies, opening his driver's side door, "but it's not like anything's going to get any smaller."

"And do you think they're _ever_ going to be finished testing me? Seriously, if I have to run on another treadmill I'm gonna..." she yawns again, waving her hand to indicate some vague but certainly drastic possibility. "I dunno, do something."

"I'm sorry about that. I told them to go easy on you," he says as she climbs into the driver's seat. "But remember, they've never seen anything like you before."

Once she closes the door he reclines the seat all the way down, and Sari begins to settle down, turning to lie on her side. She laughs briefly at his words. "Yeah, well. Them and everybody else." She curls up, closing her eyes. "Thanks for letting me sleep in…well, in here."

"Whenever you need it. I'll have to wake you up if someone needs me, though."

"Mm hm." She was already drifting off. "Good night, big guy."

"It's the middle of the solar cycle, Sari."

"Mmm, whatever."

He can't quite tell when she just stops talking and when she actually falls asleep, but after about fifteen cycles she's stopped tossing and turning and lies still, so he can start driving without waking her. She sleeps a little better with the slight motion from the roads, and if he's off on his own other bots are less likely to come find him.

Let them both take a nanoklik and turn away from the future; let them both, for a while, not think about the war to come, or which planet Sari will come to call home, or how he'll persuade the Ministry of Science that she isn't an experiment. For now, he can do this much to keep her safe, to maybe make Cybertron a little less foreign. For now, let her sleep.


End file.
